Florida Gators fan flies FSU banner over UF spring game

Fly higher, they asked. Walsh cringed and counted down the seconds to when the flight would end.

For a Florida fan towing an Florida State banner over the Gators' spring game, each lap around campus dragged on.

"We're actually big Gator fans because our headquarters is right here," said Walsh, president of AirSign.

The nationwide company has an office in Williston, where a plane flew out of on Saturday towing a banner that read, "31-7 Go Noles!"

"One of our sales people sold this thing. We're a standard company. We can't be discriminatory," Walsh said. "Most of our other pilots didn't want to fly it."

So Walsh, who said the company has flown Gators banners in the past, drew the honor of taking the banner out for an hour. He said he didn't stay around the stadium the entire time, doing laps around the campus.

"I was getting all these hate text messages from people that we know," he said, with a laugh. "I was counting down the seconds until the hour was over."

Walsh said the banner was paid for by about 12 to 15 FSU fans who chipped in for the $850 it cost to have it made and flown. He said they were just Seminole fans and not part of any particular group.

The gesture didn't go unnoticed by fans or players.

Lynden Trail, a redshirt freshman defensive end, tweeted after the game: "Great day to be a gator :-) and that plane that flew over our stadium we coming."

Walsh said its common to have rival teams fly banners over the other team's stadium. AirSign recently flew a 40-foot by 100-foot sign paid for by fans of the San Francisco Giants encouraging the World Series champs to beat the Los Angeles Dodgers.

Speculation that Walsh would lose his pilot's license seem to be unfounded as an Federal Aviation Administration spokesperson said the FAA has not received a complaint about the flight.

Walsh said the company has received plenty of response to the flight.

"We did, cause controversy always generates a lot of response like this," he said. "Nothing other than in jest."